Monday, December 12, 2005

Throw out leadership. And who cares who's been there before. What if picking teams for the Olympics in February came down to just who was playing the best when rosters have to be named Dec. 21?

This weekend, I said to a friend of mine, 'What if Team Canada was picked solely based on player's performances this year?' That got me thinking, and I've put together rosters for each of the Top 7 countries based on their players' play this season.

This is strictly statistically based, so defensive defencemen and players on weaker NHL clubs may miss out. Players are sorted by position and are in order of rank for this season (for instance, Spezza is Canada's top ranked forward).

I'm sure there may be mistakes in here (i.e. I almost put Salei with Russia when he's from Belarus), especially between the Czech/Slovak players (ahem, Mr. Golbez), so let me know and I'll correct the list. I may have also missed someone, so again, let me know.

It's funny - when you do it this way, Team USA looks a lot better than the team they're actually going to send! And Team Sweden looks downright dominating.

I've told you this before, but what makes me laugh about this whole "who'll play for Canada" brouhaha is that its completely irrelevant. For all the thousands of words to be spilled between now and February on the subject, I'd be willing to bet that Team Canada will look startingly similar to how it did the last time they played. I say there will maybe be 4 new players - tops. There'll be a new #7 defenseman. Ditto for the #3 goalie, I suspect. And two new people will come in for Lemieux and Yzerman. The net result? One (or more likely two) of Spezza, Crosby Staal are screwed out of a job.

Canada gets a medal, it most likely won't be gold, and the hand-wringing can begin again for Vancouver 2010.

I agree with Jes,It's kind of sad, the olympic roster should be based on how the player is currently playing, not on how they did play at one point in the past eight years. Olympics are to showcase the BEST there is in sports and therefore the best players should be rewarded!

2) My research expertise is much deeper in baseball than in hockey, but I'd be really leery about basing everything on a half season of statistics. There are real sample size issues involved. I mean, does anyone really think that Mikael Samuelsson is one of the twelve best forwards from Sweden?

In baseball, what's been found to work best is a weighted average of the last three seasons, with the emphasis on the most recent data. I suspect that something like this would be much better for hockey, though you might need to shorten the time horizon. And how to treat the lockout season would be a real problem.

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About Me

A sportswriter at The Globe and Mail, James covers the NHL and the game of hockey. He is a member of the Professional Hockey Writers' Association, a radio and TV analyst with TSN and was the NHL network manager at SB Nation from 2008 to 2010. A graduate of Thompson Rivers and Ryerson universities, James grew up in Kamloops, B.C. — one of Canada's great hockey cities — and was a season ticket holder in the Blazers' glory years.

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